What’s in it for me? Your new mentor, the lobster.
What’s red, lives in a crevice on the sea floor, has two pincer claws, and is your new professional role model?
The lobster.
That’s right: emulating the lobster’s habits might just be the key that unlocks a new level of professional growth for you.
Why?
Well, lobsters never stop growing.
And, in a fast-paced, fast-changing professional environment, you should be continuously growing, too.
While committing to your professional development can feel intimidating, adopting the lobster’s attitude to growth and learning is a simple way to make the process feel approachable and even enjoyable.
This Blink is packed with lobster-inspired strategies for creating simple, straightforward learning moments that, together, add up to impactful growth.
Why the lobster is your new career coach
I bet you didn’t know that the heaviest lobster ever caught weighed in at an impressive 44 pounds.
And I bet you’ve got no idea at all how this fact relates to your professional development.
I promise: it does.
But before I get to that, I’m going to tell you just a bit more about lobsters.
The reason lobsters can grow so much larger than their fellow crustaceans is to do with their hard outer shell, or exoskeleton.
It doesn’t expand with them as they grow.
Instead, when a lobster grows too large for its shell, it does something called moulting: it sheds its shell completely.
When a lobster is ready to outgrow its exoskeleton, a new shell, soft and flexible, is laid down inside the old one.
And when the lobster cannot grow any larger inside its current shell, the shell splits and the lobster bends in half before pulling itself free.
Afterwards, while the outer skin is still soft, the lobster rapidly absorbs water to expand its body.
This ensures that when the new shell hardens there’ll be plenty of wiggle room for the lobster’s next phase of growth.
Now you know a lot more about lobster growth than you did before.
But just how is this relevant to you and your career?
Well, we’re all being told that to keep pace with rapid change and disruptive new tech, it’s imperative to keep learning and growing.
But actually making that happen can feel impossible: between back-to-back meetings and overflowing inboxes, how are we supposed to do all this learning and growing?
Simple.
By emulating the lobster.
Lobsters are oriented towards growth.
And if you can learn to do like a lobster does, by building growth into the foundations of your professional life and recognizing when the limitations of your professional “shell” are holding you back, you’ll reach your potential, too.
Learn through experiment
Are you ready to learn like a lobster?
Then you need to stop thinking of ‘learning’ as yet another checkbox on your to-do list and start integrating it into your everyday routines.
And there’s a really simple way to begin.
Stop calling it learning; start calling it experimenting, instead.
When you approach your workday as an experiment, you’ll be surprised at how much valuable learning you uncover.
Why the word-swap?
Well, experimenting makes learning experiences feel way less intimidating.
Think about the difference between saying "I need to change how I run meetings" and "I'm going to experiment with how I run meetings.
" The second sentence feels more approachable, doesn’t it?
A good experiment has two qualities.
One: it’s simple enough to actually try.
Two: it folds into the work you’re already doing.
Experimenting with when you schedule deep work time, or how you word your client emails doesn’t create extra work.
It’s simply an invitation to work differently and observe the outcomes that flow on from that.
To begin experimenting, home in on frustrations.
Here’s a common one, I’m so busy at work I never have time to think.
We all know that thinking time is essential for professional performance.
Stopping to reflect, a Harvard study shows, can make people up to 23% more productive.
And yet, we struggle to find this time.
So, let’s experiment with that frustration.
Here are two approaches you could take.
First, try a to-think list.
Most people have a to-do list.
Fewer have a to-think list -- a dedicated running note of questions, problems, and ideas that need proper mental airtime.
Things like: why does this process keep breaking?
What would I do differently with that client?
When a gap in your schedule appears, even a five minute window, you have something ready to think about.
Does the to-think list enable more deep thinking time?
Second, alternate between thinking quietly and thinking out loud.
Quiet solo thinking, perhaps on a short walk or in a few moments of screen-free time, lets your brain make connections that can’t form under pressure.
Meanwhile, thinking out loud (talking to a colleague or even recording a voice memo to yourself) forces the brain to formulate thoughts in ways that can’t be surfaced by quiet thinking.
How does switching between these modes allow you to boost your thinking time?
Now, it’s over to you.
Where is your shell feeling tight?
Perhaps you’re feeling overwhelmed by meetings, or unable to address long-term priorities.
Ask yourself: what small achievable experiments could change the way you approach these challenges?
Grow through question
Why do lobsters keep growing?
Not because they’re more driven or disciplined than their fellow crustaceans.
Simply because of a biological mechanism that necessitates their continuous growth.
Humans have a mechanism that promotes continuous growth available to them, too – the question.
Every question, no matter how small or simple, opens up opportunities for learning and growth.
And there are three kinds of questions that are especially productive for fueling learning: the coaching question, the situational question, and the conversational question.
Let’s start with the coaching question.
With these questions, you’re looking to uncover specific pathways for improvement.
Try and ask more ‘what’ questions than ‘why’ questions.
When we ask ‘why’, our answers tend to explain rather than explore and, in worst case scenarios, these questions actually solidify a problem.
Instead of asking "Why don't I get on with my manager?
", try "What's one thing I could do differently to improve that relationship?
" Keep your questions timely, too.
Where possible, pose questions with an immediate time frame: not "what should I change?
" but "what's one thing I could try tomorrow?
" Next, let’s talk about situational questions, the type you deploy when you feel genuinely stuck: the goal here is to open up new perspectives and fresh solutions.
Before you start questioning, though, take a moment to match the question to what you actually need to know.
When you want to check your understanding of a problem, ask clarifying questions, "What do I actually know for certain here, and what am I assuming?
" When you want to step back and see the wider picture, ask about related factors: "Who else is affected by this, and what might they be seeing that I'm not?
" And when you want to understand something at its roots, funnel down: "What conditions have to be in place for this to keep happening?
" Now, for the questions you’re almost certainly already asking: conversational questions.
Every conversation is a learning opportunity.
Getting intentional about the questions you ask in conversation can uncover amazing learning.
Most people have a habitual question range.
Find yours simply by counting the question words you use the most.
For example, if you lean on "What" questions, which tend toward the practical, try asking "why" questions, which ask about the big picture.
Or mix up "how" questions, that target progress, with "who" questions, that bring people and relationships into the discussion.
A question is a small, simple mechanism that can drive enormous growth.
Asking better questions is what will allow you to grow continuously.
Your data is a valuable resource
When a lobster moves across the vast seabed it’s constantly sifting through what it finds there.
It’s scanning for food, for building materials, for opportunities.
There’s a vast resource available to you, too.
One that you should be in the habit of constantly sifting through: your personal data.
Now, some personal data is immediately available to you, like your step count or your screen time.
But when it comes to your professional performance, you may need to sift, lobster-like, to find useful data points that can guide your growth.
So where should you start your search?
There are three key areas worth mining for personal data; your strengths, your listening, and your productivity.
If you’ve gone through a few rounds of performance reviews you probably have some data on what your challenges and weaknesses are perceived to be.
But what about what you do well?
Knowing, growing, and showing your strengths can be a powerful path to workplace success.
Decide on three words you’d want colleagues to use to describe your professional strengths.
Then, survey your peers: what do they think your three core strengths are?
Where do your perceptions of your strengths align with your colleagues’?
Where are there gaps and how could you address them?
The next data point is listening!
You’re probably not doing it as well as you think you are.
In fact, studies show people interrupt conversations after listening for an average of just 11 seconds.
And most of those interruptions represent missed opportunities.
Deep listening is a tool that allows you to build your relationships and your influence.
So, try an interruption audit over the course of a week.
Every time you interrupt someone, note it down.
And note down the reason for the interruption, too.
Were you bored?
Anxious?
Rushed?
That "why" is your data.
Once you know your pattern, you can design a response to it that doesn't involve cutting someone off mid-sentence.
Finally, check your listening range; map who you're actually listening to across ten conversations.
If it's mostly the same three people, make the effort to seek out new, diverse perspectives.
Finally, check in on your productivity.
Your actual productivity, not just how fast you work.
Speed and busyness are not the same as effectiveness.
Track your concentration; how long can you genuinely focus before drift sets in?
This helps because knowing your baseline is the first step to extending it.
Lastly, and counterintuitively, the best route to boosting your focus might be to stop working.
Building pauses into your day is the best way to ensure your efforts are accompanied by insights.
Even five unscheduled minutes between tasks changes the quality of what follows.
Like the seabed, your working life is rich with material that can help you grow.
Learning to sort through it will yield results.
Growth is hard
Lobsters grow continuously.
But that doesn’t mean growth comes easily to them.
When a lobster sheds its hardened shell, its body, with its soft new exoskeleton, is left exposed and vulnerable.
The lobster must be careful to hide from danger and predators until its new shell has calcified.
But there’s a payoff.
With every moulting, the lobster increases its size by roughly 20 percent.
Your growth, like the lobster’s, will be challenging and scary at times.
But when you focus on learning over fear, even the most uncomfortable moments will transform into learning opportunities.
Let’s explore a topic that can make all of us feel a little like lobsters that have just lost their hard protective shell, feedback.
Even the word can evoke a heart-sinking feeling.
But feedback is one of the most powerful learning tools available to you.
Letting go of feedback fears starts with actively seeking it out.
Ask others for feedback, frequently.
And make your ask specific.
Don’t say “How is my performance?
” Say “I’d love your thoughts on how I handled that client meeting, and where you think I could have made a greater impact”.
Don’t take that question to just one person, either.
Feedback isn’t only valuable when it comes from your manager; so canvas your team members, other stakeholders, and members of other departments.
If your requests for feedback aren’t returning useful answers you should stop asking for feedback.
Instead, ask for advice.
A Harvard study found that asking for advice resulted in 56% more suggestions for improvement, compared to asking for feedback.
Feedback prompts people to evaluate the past, while advice orients them towards thinking constructively about the future.
So what do you do with the feedback or advice you get?
Receiving negative feedback is, let’s be clear, never fun.
But don’t let yourself have a knee-jerk reaction.
Getting defensive, or dismissive, won’t help you learn.
When you encounter negative feedback, use the think-feel-do framework to help you process it.
Ask yourself, What do I actually think about this?
Do I agree?
Then: How do I feel about it?
These questions can help you assess how useful the feedback is.
End by asking: What, if anything, do I want to do?
Not every piece of feedback needs acting on, but every piece deserves a considered response.
Own, and grow from, your mistakes
Lobsters don’t get to choose the moment when they shed their shell.
And neither do you.
There will be times in your working life when it feels like your protective shell has been ripped away – when you send the wrong email, flub the presentation or fail to execute the project.
These embarrassing mistakes don’t feel like learning opportunities, but they are.
You just need to approach them in the right way.
Making a mistake feels unpleasant.
This is why, when you inevitably make one, your brain goes into overdrive, trying to shield you from that unpleasant feeling, with strategies like avoidance, overanalysis, or blame-shifting.
These strategies might protect your self esteem but they’re also preventing you from accurately assessing your performance, and from finding ways to perform better in future.
To learn from your mistakes you first need to hold yourself accountable for them.
There’s no need to get down on yourself for, let’s say, missing a deadline.
But you do need to be honest with yourself about why it happened.
Your brain has a set of heuristics, mental shortcuts that it uses to make life easier.
So as long as you keep telling your brain ‘I can never make deadlines because my manager overloads me with work’, your brain will keep believing it, and you’ll keep turning work in late.
Owning your role in a mistake interrupts those easy shortcuts and creates the conditions for genuine improvement.
Try to remember, it’s a mistake, not a catastrophe.
Reframing failures as 'mistake moments' can be helpful — a mistake moment is a hiccup, one that can be corrected next time.
To deal with mistake moments, do three quick things.
Clarify the mistake neutrally: "I sent the wrong version of the deck to the client.
" Name what you've learned: "I need a final check step before anything goes externally.
" Decide on a single action to prevent it: "I'll create a send-checklist for next time.
" If it's appropriate, use this framework to briefly own the mistake in public, whether on a chat channel or an email thread.
Once you’ve owned it, move on.
Once you’ve owned your mistake, keep moving forward, using two simple frames.
Ask yourself What Went Well?
Even a difficult moment usually has something in it worth keeping.
And consider the EBI, or Even Better If factors: what changes or adjustments could you make for next time.
Vulnerability is a prerequisite for growth.
That’s true for lobsters and it's true for you, too.
Final summary
The main takeaway of this Blink to Learn Like a Lobster by Sarah Ellis and Helen Tupper is that the lobster can be an unconventional role model for professional development.
The lobster is continuously growing, and when its shell becomes too tight, it sheds it and builds itself a new one.
Facilitate your continuous growth by conducting learning experiments in the workplace, mining your personal data for insights, posing growth-oriented questions, and viewing professional challenges as growth opportunities.